In order to promote its commitment to sustainable development and recycling, Levi’s has covered with used jeans its Levi’s Stadium (a soccer field in Santa Clara, California, which serves as the current home of the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League).

All jeans were placed on the lawn by letting appear in the centre the green and universal recycling symbol.

In just two weeks, the drive collected more than 18,850 pairs of jeans and they were used to create the “Field of Jeans”. After this drive all of the denims have been donated to Goodwill locations in the Bay Area.

In 2006, Levi Strauss Europe decided to launch the jeans Levi’s Eco on the Europaen markets, becoming the first major player in the market to propose a jeans corresponding to environmental requirements throughout the process of manufacture and distribution of product.

But, because there is a but, the Bio line is still hard to find : it is not available on all points of sale and not even on the French website. The mark does not rely on bio to boost its sales… error or strategy?

Inthe1990s,thejeanmarketwasveryactive,but at the end ofthecentury, it faced a very strongdemand,withthe developmentofnewbrandshigh-enddesignerswhohaveinstalled a concept offashion,trendydenim, even an essentialluxuryproduct. On the other hand withthe emergenceof productlinesmarket likeZara,H&M,etc.Thejeanmarket has

isan actor who also sells other clothes of a relativelywide range (in other words, this is NOT their CORE BUSINESS). But indirect doesn’t mean that they are bad : they can be really dangerous, especially when it comes to luxury brands such as Armani, Guessand Calvin Klein.

After studying the advertising strategy of Levi’s and Diesel, and because the closing time of our blog is very close… We would like to give you a brief overview of non-media communication operations used by the two brands to give you a complete idea of what strategic brand management means for these major brands.

Firstly, Levi’s uses social media to promote the brand through Facebook mainly ; Levi’s has got 22,341,544 friends compared to 4,257,210 for Diesel ! One month ago, Levi’s offered its customers the opportunity to come into the Levi’s store in Champs Elysées and customize their own jeans in the DIY studio for free ! They also contracted a partnership with Kanako, a famous illustrator for My Little Paris ; that allowed them to offer a denim bag illustrated by Kanako from 130€ purchase. This example of «drive in-store marketing» is a different way of managing communication by involving the customers, bring him back to the store and as such, reinforce brand awareness.

As for Diesel, the brand uses Facebook as well to promote new collections, showcase its products by posting some pictures of public figures wearing Diesel clothes / accessories etc. But as we’ve seen thoughout the last months, Diesel loves creating buzz, so that to increase brand awareness and brand recognition. Let’s take an example of a street marketing operation as part of the campaign « Be Stupid » that we mentioned earlier. Diesel launched very original and very interactive street marketing operations in France and Switzerland. The concept was simple : they put large blocks of ice in the street, that all formed together «Be stupid » and that all enclosed jeans. A sign stated that people who managed to break the ice could bring the product to the Diesel store to replace it with a real one ! This interaction was memorable, advertising was not necessary as it was exposed to such a mass audience that the word-of-mouth worked very well and reinforced the idea that Diesel is definitely an unconventional brand.

You can find more about this operation on the following link via Youtube :

Nowadays, the jean is surely the star of the wardrobe, but unfortunately it’s also the most polluting item of clothing at its confection. Indeed: huge amounts of water, pesticides and chemical dyes are truly involved in its production. One can say that the price to be on top of fashion is very heavy to pay for our planet!

Fortunately, even the big brands have become aware about their environmental impact, and have well understood that communicate on these progress could be very positive in terms of brand image. This is the case of Levi with its famous process « Water Less » set up earlier in 2011.

Levis changed its manufacturing process, enabling them to save from 20% up to 88% of water regarding the fading step.

The brand also asked customers to participate themselves by changing effort their habits: they recommended washing jeans with only cold water when they are not stained and wash less often in general. In order to draw your attention, just a little calculation dated from 2011: if all the brand’s fans had decided to wash their jeans only once every two weeks instead of once a week, the economy would amount to 756,725,738 litters of water (even if actually, we’re not currently capable to reckon the fair amount realized since the beginning of the project).

What about the Carbon footprint of the brand?

After stopping with sanding techniques in 2010 (which had made thousands of sick workers), Levi’s significantly decreased its water consumption and is also involved in other initiatives such as being totally transparent regarding their carbon footprint. Indeed, the brand has clearly announced its data about the ecological footprint of its jeans since 2011.

Other sustainable progresses for the brand?

Nowadays, Levis goes on with their range entitled: Waste Less! The concept? The hessian of these jeans partly comes from recycled plastic bottles of water. Aware of the US laxity about ecology, the brand decided to mix this “garbage” element with cotton in order to find a new material.

Moreover, they engaged not to use organic elements for their packaging or accessories such as wood or paper.

In a nutshell, while Levis is still a best seller in the market in 2014, one can see that progresses are truly implemented to their manufacturing processes. It’s clearly encouraging and they knew how to “hide” the fact that they’re very greedy in terms of natural resources (water … etc). Such a change should show the path to smaller brands …

If you want to learn more about Levis’ good resolutions, please click right below !

So, to conclude our marketing study of Levi’s and Diesel we propose you to analyse the brand identity of these two denim brands.

The brand identity concept was mentioned by J. Kapferer. He has based his brand identity on six dimensions, which are organized into a prism: physique, relationship, reflection, personality, culture and self-image. Moreover, he has distinguished a sender and a receiver side, plus an externalisation and internalisation side. The 6 identity facets express the tangible and intangible characteristics of the brand.

So thanks to brand identity we can see what are the values of Levi’s and Diesel, their particular vision and aim, and why they are different and recognizable.